Rigidity of mass-preserving 1-Lipschitz maps from integral current spaces into \(\mathbb{R}^n\) (Q6097701)

This interesting paper proves a rigidity theorem for volume-preserving 1-Lipschitz maps, motivated by the paper of \textit{L.-H. Huang} and \textit{D. A. Lee} [Commun. Math. Phys. 337, No. 1, 151--169 (2015; Zbl 1321.53036)] on the stability of the positive mass theorem. The main result is: Theorem. Let \((X,d,T)\) be an \(n\)-dimensional integral current space. Let \(\psi:X \to \mathbb{R}^n\) be a 1-Lipschitz map such that: (1) \(\psi_\#T = [[B_1]]\) (\(B_1\) is the unit ball in \(\mathbb{R}^n\)); (2) \(\mathbf{M}(T) = \mathbf{M}\left(\psi_\#T\right)\); (3) \(\psi\) is injective on \(\mathrm{set}(\partial T)\) (the canonical set of the boundary) with image contained in \(\partial B_1\). Then \(\psi\) is an isometry between \((X,d)\) and \(B_1 \subset \mathbb{R}^n\) as metric spaces. It is remarked that here \(B_1\) can be replaced by any convex subset of \(\mathbb{R}^n\). The proof has several key ingredients. First, by the coarea formula in metric spaces, \(T\) is essentially injective and has multiplicity one \(\|T\|\)-a.e.; see Lemma 3.4 for details. Second, it is proved in Lemma 3.2 that 1-dimensional slices of \(T\) along orthogonal projections in the target space \(\mathbb{R}^n\) are (almost surely) geodesics. For this purpose, the authors invoke structural theorems for 1-dimensional integral currents and the fact that the area factor of Euclidean space is one. In addition, a Euclidean geometric Lemma 3.5 on the existence of a good projection is proved. Applications to the stability of the positive mass theorem are discussed. Examples are provided to illustrate, among other issues, the necessity of the Assumption (3) in the above theorem.